'Delusion' of film industry in Australia

By Alexa MosesApril 2 2002

Home truths ... Gabriel Byrne.

Actor Gabriel Byrne has said that anyone who talks about an Australian film industry is just "deluded".

The Irish star, who has been in Queensland shooting his latest movie, Ghost Ship, said: "People talk about the Australian movie - is Moulin Rouge an Australian movie? I don't know. Should there be such things as Australian movies? I don't know, it's a bigger question.

"All I know is that people who talk about an Australian film industry are deluded."

Byrne, who has starred in hit films such as The Usual Suspects, End of Days and Stigmata, said that instead of having an industry, Australia, like Ireland, made a few independent films.

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He blamed the dominance of Hollywood for constraining film industries in other countries.

"In order to say you have a film industry you must have an infrastructure which supports a home-grown industry, and I just don't think that's possible with the way American films have a stranglehold on the distribution systems," he said.

Byrne said one danger was that Australia would become "a cheap studio for Hollywood".

"And if they found somewhere else where there was similar light and conditions they would be there," he said.

The actor also said that the dominance of Hollywood films in the marketplace also threatened cultural identity.

"People absorb the values and the morality of these films and they contribute in no small way to the Americanisation of culture.

"I can see it here in Australia."

Local film-maker Al Clark, who was a producer on Australian hits Chopper and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, agrees that the term "film industry" has been abused here.

"Hollywood is an industry, Bollywood is an industry," he said.

"What we have here is an art and a business."

Clark supported big-budget Hollywood production in Australia, so long as there was diversity in film-making.

"The most important thing is to ensure that the large force does not swallow the small one," he said.

What made films Australian, Clark said, was not who financed the picture but who had creative control of the work.